I think you just haven’t been exposed to all the bad research in political psychology. The theories are like: conservatives are biased to rationalize injustice (but I’m not), conservatism is motivated cognition (but liberalism is not), conservatism is all about tribalism (but liberalism is not), conservatism is about blindly obeying or exerting authority (but liberalism is not). And then there’s all the research on how irrational humans are, and how they should be “nudged” by benevolent bureaucrats, while never mentioning how the bureaucrats themselves are vulnerable to the same biases. There’s a paper on how nudge interventions never mention the people doing the judging (can’t find it at the moment). Then there’s the assumption that stereotypes are inaccurate (even though plenty of evidence shows they’re accurate). Then there’s decades of research on biases in decision-making, with no consideration of how these biases might be adaptive under constraints of time or resources or ecology (see Lionel Page’s work for a good corrective). And then there’s the research on “misinformation” which fails to consider how the researchers themselves might be biased in identifying what counts as “misinformation” (see Dan Williams on this). Trust me, I’m thinking of “proper” social scientists here, as I am one and know how they operate. Though of course these kinds of failings are common among nonscientist thinkers as well. We’re all biased to see the logs in others’ eyes and not the specks in our own. Applying theories to ourselves is extremely useful and protects against self-aggrandizing nonsense, evolutionarily implausible theories, and partisan cheerleading.